This call goes out to all my fellow data nerds on the list.
Go register for an account on freebase.com.
It's a wiki for structured semantic information. Here's an example of
what that means in practice: After adding an entry for Laval
University, I added the faculty of medicine as a "Subsidiary or
Constituent School". The faculty page was updated to reflect that the
university of laval is its "Parent Institution".
So it's a wiki that's smart about relationship types between its entries.
The data is licensed under a Creative Commons license. Queries can be
made that use those relationships "Find all politicians in party X
that went to university in province Y" is the type of query that
becomes possible as soon as the data is available.
It's still in alpha, and is an invitation-only affair. It has rough
edges, but it's one of the more interesting tech developments I've
seen in years. I believe it will make a huge difference in how we
approach civic access discussions in the near future.
Cheers,
Daniel.
--
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